Marathon 1 - The Bath Beat, Satrurday 14th April

What an event this turned out to be! I arrived at the check in at 7.30 am for an 8.30 start. Expecting to be given a race number, I was given a set of directions, a map and a check-point card instead and told to start as soon as I was ready. What about the start? What about the number? Directions were no good to me…I had no reading glasses! The only thing I new about this event that it was for walkers as well as runners. Nothing about navigation and orienteering. This event was not just a marathon, it was to be an extreme adventure....and I mean extreme!

To start with, I had to run with a group of ultra runners, several whose times were below 3hrs for a marathon . I had no choice, as I couldn’t read my map, so I had to stick with them in order to get round. The course was all off road and followed trails and public rights of way. Ascent and decent was like I have rarely experienced before, but so interesting and so scenic. I just did not know that the area around Bath was so damned hilly.

We all realised after a short distance that a finish time for this event was to be totally irrelevant, especially after a number of wrong turns took us off route. My little mishap didn’t help matters either! After 4 miles or so, I slipped whilst crossing a style and a conveniently placed length of barbed wire ripped the seat out of my lycra bottoms exposing a not so pretty part of my anatomy. You could imagine the comments that I had to endure as we passed other participants, and members of the public. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.

After 11 hours or so, we caught up with a slightly slower group of super-fit Tri- athletes, so I tagged along with them, as the pace with the others was just too fast. The pace with these lads remained sensible until we hit the serious hills just after 21 miles. Then I struggled! I had to push myself to my limits to keep with them, as I was relying on them to get me to the finish. And they were not going to wait! We had already dropped one of the group within the last few miles as he was off our pace. The last two hills were impossible for us to run and the ascents of both hills were in excess of 500 ft each and by now the heat of the day was at its peak and dehydration was increasingly becoming a possibility.

I finally made it back to the finish in just under 5 hours 30 minutes, more than two hours longer than my previous best for a marathon and the longest single time that I have ever ran for. After a total 27 miles and more than 3200 feet of ascent, this made the Snowdonia marathon seem like a walk in the park. But it made my suffering worth it for that cup of tea and endless supply of cakes and biscuits that was waiting for me at the end.

After completing this event, I now know that this was not the ideal event to have chosen to start off My Four Marathon Challenge, but its 1 down, and 3 to go. So bring on London next week!

My route & route profile
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